New LAN, worse sound. Possible solutions?

If you are using Ethernet Over Powerline (EoP) try a different method. EoP cannot handle a lot of data as I found out. I found it acceptable when listening to radio stations or CD rips, any high resolution music just failed. WiFi isn’t that much better either. Cat 6 wiring through out the house would be my recomendation.

@Mike-B I hope my wiring is, let’s say, ok at least…

@djh1697 I’m not using EoP, just a conventional LAN with Cat 6 ethernet cables.

I would always hardwire with Cat5e or Cat6 if you can. Even if that means running cables outside the building.

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Have you tried streaming over WiFi if that’s an option?

Last year I tried Wi-Fi streaming, I must say I was surprised by the quality, but I’m a bit “allergic” to Wi-FI and I prefer to use good old cables all the time. Everything usually works so much better in my opinion.

Except when it doesn’t… :wink:

(Sorry)

It’s interesting that people seem to shun WiFi and instead spend £100s, even £1000s on expensive switches and cables etc to eliminate noise or whatever without trying WiFi.

When I has a 272 I did try WiFi and struggled to tell a difference but kept a cabled solution due to dropouts, probably because the 272 had old tech WiFi capabilities. I don’t have WiFi capability on my existing setup so can’t compare.

The merits of wired over WiFi has probably been addressed on here before, so I’ll take a look sometime.

Apologies for the thread drift

Wi-fi has the advantage of complete galvanic isolation from preceding network and broadband supply BUT if your wi-fi and stereo are fighting for bandwidth then clearly it wont work very well, being noisy, error prone and subject to random dropouts.

In my system, wi-fi outperforms a direct cable link by a substantial margin, but the particular wi-fi band is only handling music related data.

Sound Quality of music over networks is all about optimum set-up, like everything else hi-fi related.

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@AndyR I can’t argue with that :grinning:

@WeekendWarrior

Nothing to worry about in my opinion. I think it’s a matter of preferences and it’s interesting to compare different ideas and solutions. By the way I still prefer the audio quality using cables, but I admit I was surprised by the Wi-Fi quality.

@Blackmorec I’m not sure it will help, but you gave me the idea to try port forwarding (if it’s called this way) on my managed switch, maybe it can help to create a specific path through cables and reduce noise even a little bit.

A sensible strategy. Wi-Fi has its place and frees us from cables but bandwidth and potential for interference considerations mean that wired is best.

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